


Children of the Magi

by Thierrys



Category: Saiunkoku Monogatari
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-01-02
Updated: 2008-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 12:48:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/87665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thierrys/pseuds/Thierrys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest.</i> -- O. Henry</p>
            </blockquote>





	Children of the Magi

**Author's Note:**

> For Malnisst, who requested: "I really want to see a story where Shuuei and Ryuuren have to work together in spite of (or maybe because of) their differences. Some sort of mystery surrounding a friend--not necessarily serious. I would especially love anything that incorporates the awkwardness of their interactions, without being slapstick silly."

It was winter, it was morning, and the two youngest of the Ran brothers had quarreled bitterly. It was no different than the sort they usually had, and at the same time very different; both brothers left the Ran compound angry, raw and miserable.

Shuuei had stormed through the streets of Kiyou, marching aimlessly and winding up, perhaps inevitably, at the mansion known as Kougarou. Under Lady Kouchou's ministrations, his anger dissolved, leaving a weighty regret in the pit of his stomach. He ought to apologize, he knew, but it would take more than that to mollify his brother. Kouchou had offered a suggestion: Shuuei-dono's younger brother was fond of odds and ends, was he not? The sort of strange things no one else saw much worth in? Of late, a strange peddler had arrived in the city, a man who dressed like a beggar and spoke like a fox, who hawked his wares in the streets and watched passersby closely with strange, dark eyes. Shuuei, driven as much by curiosity as anything, immediately set out to locate the peddler, and this is where the story begins.

Finding the strange peddler and his strange cart was a task more easily said than done. Shuuei trotted through the narrow streets and the wide ones, looking in all directions. The day was short, though, and the street vendors were already beginning to close up for the night. 

The sky had dimmed to the curious slate-blue of winter twilights when Shuuei began to wonder if he shouldn't give up. Peddlers never stayed in one place for long; this one had probably already moved on and besides, Ryuuren was mercurial enough that he'd probably accept the apology if it were given in the right spirit, he thought. _I just wanted to tell you,_ Shuuei would say, _I know it seems like I don't accept you—_too awkward – _as my brother, you are of course very dear to me – _too obligatory – _we may not always agree on somethings, but –_and he stepped on something that went "**_Screee!!_**" He stumbled backwards into a stall full of pots and pans, which fell all around him with enough of a clamor and clanging to wake the dead. 

_ Kouyuu is starting to rub off on me,_ he thought, spouting apologies and hastily attempting to return the saucepans to their rightful places. He turned to apologize to the vendor and found himself faced with a short, snub-featured foreigner and a monkey wearing an accusatory expression.

"No harm done, none done," the peddler assured him in oily, musical tones. "I believe it is my companion who would like to hear an apology."  He indicated the monkey, who scowled at Shuuei.

Shuuei, a little taken aback, replied, "Then I do beg your pardon, good sir," to the monkey. He felt slightly foolish. "I assure you it was quite by accident; I'm afraid I was not looking where I was going."  And that was strange, because he could have sworn the alleyway was empty when he entered it, though he could not be quite sure.

The monkey gave him a doubtful look, but the peddler clapped his hands – odd hands, too many joints? too many fingers? – and said, "Well, if that's done with, let's get on to business. What is it that you're looking for, friend? Or what have you brought to trade?"

"To trade?" Shuuei repeated. He did not like feeling so off-balance; it was like being stuck in one of Ryuuren's conversations. "I'm afraid I don't quite catch your meaning. If it's remuneration you're seeking–"

"Nothing like, nothing like." The peddler shuffled behind the cart, the monkey clinging to his shoulder. "Come, surely there is something you are looking for? I can give you an excellent deal. I have here phoenix eyes and dragon feathers, kisses, thimbles, the sake cup from a fox princess' wedding – no? What about fish scales – I have C**♯**through G minor – or hens' teeth, quite cheap."

"Hens," said Shuuei, feeling increasingly out of his league, "do not have teeth."

"Not anymore," agreed the peddler with a wink. "There is, of course, a much higher quality of product. In here," he took a tiny blue vial from a shelf, "there is an extremely acute sense of wonder. Your brother would like that, don't you think? Or perhaps he might benefit from distilled common sense, just a drop – "

"Just a moment, now," Shuuei interrupted, frowning. His brother? That's right, he had been going to apologize, going to give Ryuuren a gift to show no hard feelings. Something unusual would be even better, if Shuuei wanted to prove he didn't mind his younger brother's strangeness. "I wonder, do you have anything more, ah, substantial?"

The peddler's eyes glinted. "Indeed I do," he replied, lowering his voice. "Indeed, I have just the thing. One moment—" and he ducked behind the cart.

Shuuei waited, hearing the shuffle of boxes, a series of crashes, an offended yelp and a litany of what were certainly foreign curses before the peddler emerged. The old man pushed something across the stand toward Shuuei. It was a thin, dark box, ebony black, and lacquered with bright, exotic birds. They were flying, really flying, serenely across the box, their wings glittering with every sweep. Shuuei unlatched the box and flipped the lid; the interior was lined in velvety feathers of every hue, and the cushion was indented with a very particular shape.

"Æolus' flute case," the peddler announced proudly. "Never heard of him, I suppose? Well, let's just say this item was procured in the Western isles, yes, imported at great cost. I'll let you have it, but it will cost you dear. But nothing is too high a price for your brother's forgiveness, isn't that so?"

"How much is it?" Shuuei asked, reaching for his purse. The peddler stopped him with a sharp gesture.

"Not money, friend," he said. "Money is cheap, and almost completely useless. What I want is a _sacrifice._"

"A…sacrifice?" Shuuei's brow knit. "Somehow I don't think you're referring to incense or the like."

"Quite right," agreed the peddler. "I want your determination, tempered with love and a healthy dose of hesitation. Some curiosity, some covetousness, some pride and some reluctance. I want it spiced with guilt and pure, brotherly affection." He leaned forward, a hungry smile spreading across his knobby features. "I want you to give me your sword."

"My…sword?" That was not what Shuuei had been expecting, if 'expecting' was the right word to use at all. But his sword was just an ordinary sword; there was nothing interesting or magical about it. If that was what the peddler wanted for that incredible item, there was almost nothing easier…but still.

"But it's been in my family for hundreds of years – it's not really mine to give. Besides," his father had given it to him, almost on a whim: an unexpected gesture of affection towards his often overlooked fourth son. Besides, his older brothers often admired it, and they were not so easily impressed. Besides, Shuuei had often thought he might give it to his own child, one day; not the smartest one or the most skilled, but the one often overshadowed by the others' brightness…

"Would it help your decision any," asked the peddler casually, "if I told you that your brother plans to leave town tonight? And that if he does, you will have lost your last chance to reconcile with him?" At Shuuei's startled glance, he shrugged. "One way," he added, "or another."

Somehow, Shuuei didn't disbelieve him.

And when it came down to it, it was the sacrifice itself that would mean the most to Ryuuren. Like the peddler, Ryuuren found valuables worthless and worthless items valuable. That was what made him Ryuuren: he saw what others did not see, and did not see what others saw. Ryuuren might adore the box, Shuuei knew, but he would consider its cost the true gift.

Shuuei hesitated a moment longer. Then, in one quick motion, he slid the sword from its sheath and laid it lengthwise across the stall, beside the flute case.

"Well," said the peddler, "it seems we have ourselves a deal."  He smiled, with a mouth full of teeth like broken glass.

***

What Ryuuren hated, really _hated_, about Shuuei, was how a single word or expression from him could wipe out years of rejecting conventionality and societal norms, and turn him back into the awkward child who couldn't seem to be "normal" no matter how hard he tried. It wasn't fair, he'd thought, that Shuuei, who was so average in everything he did, made friends with minimal effort, and had no trouble speaking and acting like everybody else. Ryuuren might have – whatever it was that Ryuurens have – but it didn't included social skills, or that inherent understanding of conventions everyone else in the world seemed to possess. Even Li Kouyuu, for all his deficiencies, had apparently little trouble when it came to that sort of thing…

But Ryuuren couldn't help what he was, he knew, any more than Kouyuu could help getting lost the minute he tried to go anywhere. Which was why his brother's remarks, whether deserved or not, had stung.

"You should give your brother a chance," Kouyuu had insisted, struggling to keep up with Ryuuren's stride through Kiyou's crowded winter streets. Shuuei had vanished from sight almost immediately, and his friend was trying to keep Ryuuren from doing the same.

"Are you going to tell me he didn't mean it?" Ryuuren's tone was flat. "Or that he isn't embarrassed by everything I do? Or perhaps that you understand how I feel but I should forgive him anyway."

"I _don't_ understand and neither does he," Kouyuu puffed, clapping a hand to his side. Ryuuren sped up his pace. "But he _wants _to. He does, really. Give him a chance." He paused to catch his breath. "He'll calm down and apologize. He'll…Ryuuren? Oy, Ryuuren!"

But Ryuuren had seized the moment and disappeared into the crowd, leaving Kouyuu to puzzle his way back. Ryuuren didn't harbor any ill feelings toward his brother's friend, but he needed to be alone to nurse his grudge. Slipping out of the crowd, Ryuuren climbed over the guard-rail and walked along the bank of the icy river that flowed through the city.

Deep in thought, he followed the river, stepping over stones and passing under bridges until he came to a wide, dark bridge he didn't remember. Ryuuren entered the underpass slowly, trying to place where in the city he could be. Something – the shadows obscured it – was blocking the way ahead. As Ryuuren drew closer, he realized it was a sort of peddler's cart, decked in crystals and cages and animal bones, manned by a wizened creature that looked almost human.

"Why, hello," said the peddler, looking up. "What have we here?" His eyes – dusky gold, with slitted cat's pupils – took in Ryuuren's clothes, hat and particularly flute. He tapped his too many fingers with a few too many joints eagerly against the stall. "Come to trade, have you?"

Ryuuren ignored him and turned to inspect the small monkey that was sitting on the stand. The tiny macaque peered up at him and tapped its chin. Suddenly, it reached up and withdrew a gold coin from behind Ryuuren's ear, surprising a laugh out of him.

"Where did you find that, my friend?" he asked. The monkey flashed him a toothy smile.

"Clever fellow, isn't he?" the peddler laughed. He held out his arm and the monkey leapt onto it, climbing to his shoulder to receive a scratch on the head. "We've been travelling together for years, and I still haven't learned all his tricks."

"So you didn't teach him at all?" Ryuuren asked, watching as the monkey began to carefully pull a long red scarf out of the peddler-thing's ear.

"Not a thing, and what's more, he won't do a thing I tell him to. Marches to his own drummer, this one." The peddler tweaked the monkey's ear playfully. "I don't always understand why he does what he does, but then, I'm no monkey. He probably doesn't understand me half the time either." He winked at Ryuuren. "But I'll tell you what, we're family. We love each other even if we don't know what's going on half the time."

_ Must be nice,_ Ryuuren thought. But he must have spoken aloud, because the peddler looked at him quizzically. "It's a pleasant arrangement, if he can be a monkey, and you can be…yourself, without worrying what the other thinks."

"Well, I wouldn't go that far," the peddler demurred. "After all, monkeys have some pretty offensive behavior, and I'm sure he thinks that about us as well. No, it's no good to make the other accept you exactly as you are, without any conditions at all. If you know something you do annoys the other, it's better to stop it entirely. Otherwise, it's not a compromise at all."

As Ryuuren mulled this over, the peddler began to pack up his stall. Masks, feathers, and curiously-shaped jars were stacked and boxed, and Ryuuren replayed the morning's quarrel in his head. Shuuei had been embarrassed – "_humiliated,_" he'd said – over something Ryuuren hadn't considered terribly important. But if that sort of behavior was so devastating to his older brother, he thought, was it really alright for him to keep doing it? True, Shuuei often censured and teased him and apologized for him to others, but he'd always defended Ryuuren as well, and done his best to watch out for him.

He could, he suppose, do something nice for Shuuei as well.

"Just a moment," he announced. If he were going to reconcile with Shuuei, he would do it correctly. The peddler stopped his packing and looked up. "I would like to make a trade with you," Ryuuren said. "I require a gift for my older brother. In return–" he took a breath, "I will give you _this._" With a flourish, he produced his precious bamboo flute, and presented it to the pleased peddler with both hands.

"A flute, eh?" The peddler mused. "If I'm correct, this item is very dear to you."

"It is," Ryuuren agreed, wanting the peddler to agree before he was tempted to change his mind. "I have had it since childhood."

The peddler looked as if he wished to say something more, but smiled instead. "Did you have anything particular in mind? What might your brother like?"

Ryuuren frowned. Shuuei's taste in everything was so different than his own. His eye fell on a half-closed box, the one the peddler had been packing. Some dark object was poking out of the corner; with great caution Ryuuren lifted the box's lid to get a better view. It was a scabbard, made of smoky black wood and inlaid with patterned gold. Ryuuren thought immediately of Shuuei's favorite sword and its increasingly worn sheath. This could be just the thing.

"What about this?" he asked, but the peddler was already wrapping it up. The monkey, perched on the roof of the cart, stuck its tongue out at Ryuuren and put its face in its hands. 

***

It was long dark by the time Shuuei returned to the Ran compound. He had been going to pack quickly and set out to find Ryuuren, but was cut short when he entered his suite and found his brother sitting at the table.

"Ryuuren," he breathed, unable to disguise his relief. Ryuuren stood, holding a lengthwise package wrapped in course cloth and tied with string.

"Fooli—" he began, and stopped to correct himself. "Elder brother, I have brought you something, so that you may not hold hard feelings against me for my actions earlier today." He presented the package to Shuuei.  "Please accept this."

Shuuei took it, inspecting it curiously. "It seems we think alike more than we want to admit, Ryuuren." He put the package aside to produce a smaller one of his own from the folds of his robes. "I brought this for you for the same reason."

Ryuuren accepted it gently, tilting his head as if listening to something inside of it. "In that case," he suggested, "why don't we open them together?"

Shuuei smiled at him. "That sounds like a fine idea." They sat at the table, carefully untied the strings, and gently pulled away the layers of cloth until the gifts themselves were revealed.

There was a long silence.

"Thank you," Shuuei said finally. He gave Ryuuren a bright smile. "This is beautiful. It's from the Tang Dynasty, isn't it? I, ah, don't have that particular sword with me, but…" he trailed off, as Ryuuren stared at him with wide eyes. "What is it?"

Ryuuren clutched the box with fingers, growing whiter by the second. "I…" He glanced down at the birds, then back at Shuuei. "I traded my flute to a peddler to get that sheath."

Shuuei stared. "I traded my sword for that flute case."

They continued to stare at each other.

"That…that _bastard!_" Ryuuren finally exclaimed, and the outburst was so uncharacteristic that Shuuei dissolved into laughter right then and there. Ryuuren glared at him reproachfully at first, but the longer Shuuei laughed, the more Ryuuren's shoulders began to shake, and he joined in as well. And they laughed and laughed, and Shuuei reached over to embrace Ryuuren, and they laughed some more.

The flute case and the sword sheath were quite forgotten.

***

_Meanwhile, miles outside of Kiyou… _

"Interesting!" the strange man said. "Very interesting! Astonishing, even!" His yellow eyes goggled as he stared at Kouyuu. "Who _did_ this? It's incredible…the confusion, the complete lack of recognitive ability, the miniscule timespan… I must have it!" He looked earnestly at Kouyuu. "How much? How much for that ingenious sense of direction?"

"Excuse me?" Kouyuu was not used to his sense of direction being referred to as a tangible object, nor indeed, to being asked to sell it.

"Your sense of direction," the tiny man repeated. "I want to buy it from you. I have no money, but I can trade. Look, here's a sword – very ancient, makes its user undefeatable, attracts ladies as well."

"Well, I—" Kouyuu peered at the sword. It looked familiar. "But I really don't have much need of that…"

"Oh, quite understandable, that's the fashion these days, isn't it?" The man dropped the sword and began to root through his pockets. "Perhaps this flute would be more to your liking? Very keen sound, quite talkative. Doubles as a weapon!" He illustrated this point with a wide swing; Kouyuu stepped backwards out of the way.

"But I need my sense of direction!" he protested. "It's the only one I've got."

"Oh, pish," the peddler argued. "They all grow back, eventually. Besides, yours is twisted, warped, won't do you a lick of good. Come, now," he beckoned with the flute. "The sword? The flute? I'm offering you the deal of a lifetime, you know."

"Well…" Kouyuu said hesitantly. "I suppose…"

The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back in the snow. Groaning softly, he pulled himself up and looked around. It took him a moment to recognize the gardens of the Ran compound, snow-covered and starlit as they were, and another to notice the cloth-wrapped bundle set beside him.

_ A pleasure doing business,_ read its tag. _Please enjoy your purchases._

_ Strange_, thought Kouyuu. _I don't remember making any purchases._

The door to the house slid open and Shuuei peered out. "Kouyuu?" he called. "What on earth are you doing out there?"

"It's far too late in the evening for weeding the garden," added Ryuuren, appearing beside him. "You'll only frighten the flowers."

Kouyuu scowled at them. "Then invite me in," he said, rising to his feet and swaying for a moment. His head felt a little funny. "And take this package with you – it isn't mine."

"What makes you think it's ours?" Shuuei rejoined, stepping out into the garden. He hefted the bundle in one hand and gave the other to Kouyuu. "No matter – we'll see that it gets returned to its rightful owner."

And there ends our tale.

  


End file.
